


Serendipity

by xslytherclawx



Category: Never Have I Ever (TV)
Genre: Background Femslash, Canon Jewish Character, Casual Sex, F/M, Getting Together, Jewish Ben Gross, Jewish Holidays, Ten Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28162503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xslytherclawx/pseuds/xslytherclawx
Summary: In 2029, Rosh Hashanah and Ganesh Chaturthi overlap.Ben, recently graduated from law school and living in New York, runs into Devi at a bar in the Valley.Matters progress.
Relationships: Ben Gross/Devi Vishwakumar
Comments: 14
Kudos: 85
Collections: All Your Faves Are Jewish, Yuletide 2020, xslytherclawx's jewish fic, xslytherclawx’s events collection





	Serendipity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dalia (Dalia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dalia/gifts).



> Thanks again to Karios for beta reading and helping with the title!
> 
> (Technically, the holiday is Ganesh Chaturthi, but the show uses that and Ganesh Puja interchangeably)
> 
> edit 1/1/21: now that YT2020 is no longer anon, I thought I'd share the [playlist i listened to while writing this](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fjiliI5fSv3Kc0kA6ki3h?si=vYmMjCN0SsuFcTwkW36nZg) if anyone wants to listen!

Ben can’t believe his eyes.

He’s not typically the type to go home for the High Holy Days. Not that he doesn’t observe them – he doesn’t go to shul every week, or anything (he has a life!), but if he’s going home for any holidays, it’s going to be Passover. Or Chanukah, but that’s really just to get the fuck out of the northeast for a week in December.

He didn’t even plan on staying in the northeast – first New Haven, then Cambridge, and now, finally, New York – but what was left for him in L.A.? He loves his parents, but they’ve never exactly been  _ present. _

But things are weird now.

He has, like, a professional job at a law firm that his dad didn’t even need to pull strings for him to get. He passed the New York Bar exam on his first try!

And his dad, actually, like, asked him to come.

Of course he said yes.

And of course his parents had something super important come up last minute.

And now…

Now he’s at some shitty bar in the Valley, and he sees Devi Vishwakumar sitting at one of the high tops with two other women he doesn’t recognize.

Before he can think better of it, he approaches their table.

He realizes when he gets close that one of the women is Fabiola Torres – so the other must be her wife. Ben heard she got married.

He tries to come up with something cool to say, but all that comes out is “long time no see.”

He doesn’t know what he expects Devi to do.

He does  _ not _ expect her to frown (with a furrowing of her brows that is definitely  _ not _ adorable) and say, “I didn’t think you came home for the High Holy Days.”

And, well, of course Devi knows when the High Holy Days are. That doesn’t even faze him.

What fazes him is the implication that she keeps up with what he’s doing.

“Well,” he says after a second, “my dad asked me, but then of course he had to bail last minute – something with one of his clients.” He rolls his eyes.

“Wow, is Ben Gross  _ not _ name-dropping, or did your dad just get some boring-ass clients?”

Ben prickles a bit at that, but he tries to take it in good stride. Devi’s always known how to get under his skin. “Believe it or not, I’ve realized that name dropping is kind of gauche.”

Devi rolls her eyes. “Of  _ course _ you use words like  _ gauche.” _

“Hey, I’m not ashamed to admit that I went to  _ two  _ Ivies.”

“So did I,” Devi says.

He knows. “And yet your vocabulary really hasn’t developed. What do they even teach you at Princeton?”

“You’re just saying that because you haven’t seen my legal briefs.”

“Are they always like this?” Fabiola’s wife asks. She must know Devi, right? Is Devi not like this around people who aren’t him? He’s not sure how that makes him feel.

“At least since the sixth grade,” Fabiola says.

Which isn’t even true; they’ve been like this way longer than that. But that’s not important.

“Sorry,” Ben says. “That was rude of me. Fabiola, you’re working at CalTech, right?”

And that’s enough to get her talking about her engineering projects and eliminate any awkwardness and tension.

Even if it turns out the U.N. weren’t so unfuckable after all, he has to admit – any one of them would probably still make an excellent cock block. 

If he were in the market for that kind of thing.

Which he isn’t.

Not that he has trouble getting laid, but.

Well, that’s not the point.

* * *

He offers to pay for the Uber to take Devi home. She rolls her eyes and calls him a rich fucking asshole, but she agrees. 

“Where are you staying?” she asks while they wait for the Uber to come. 

“With my parents.”

Devi nods like she understands. She’s staying with her mom, but Ben’s pretty sure that her mom never turned her childhood bedroom into a guest room. It’s probably exactly like Devi left it when she left for college. “Is Patty still there?”

Ben smiles. “Yeah, she is.”

“Think she could still make me one of those meat lovers’ omelettes?”

“If you really want to waste part of your vacation eating omelettes, sure.”

“Um, are you kidding me? Ben, I would literally kill a man for one of Patty’s omelettes.”

Cancelling the Uber is the easiest thing in the world. He’s still sober enough to drive.

* * *

His parents aren’t home when he pulls up. He wonders if that’s a sign – or if this is a mistake – but Devi is out of the car and walking up to the house like she owns the place before he can ruminate too long on it.

He sees the face she makes at his old room – now a guest room his mother designed, and therefore devoid of any feeling of  _ Ben. _

So, to distract her from the soulless shell of a room, he kisses her.

It’s not the first time he’s slept with Devi.

Which is probably why it’s so easy to rationalize what they’re doing.

She tells him she’s only spending the night for the omelettes in the morning. He lets himself believe her.

* * *

As promised, Patty makes Devi a meat lovers’ omelette in the morning – after she’s finished fussing over her. It’s weird. Ben’s parents came by earlier – it’s not technically Rosh Hashanah anymore, not since sundown last night – but they’re still busy. He’s staying through Yom Kippur, anyway.

He’s not convinced they even really remember Devi, even though she literally lived with them for a week. It was almost a decade ago, but still. Patty remembers her.

Devi absolutely loses it over the omelette. She makes Patty promise to email her the recipe (Ben could tell her the recipe – it’s eggs and cheese and meat – but he doesn’t).

It’s September, which means the weather is turning in New York, but in L.A., it’s still summer. Even if it’s nowhere near as swampy as East Coast summers – it’s still hot.

“It fucking  _ sucks,” _ Devi is saying. “I mean, I’m glad I went to Princeton, obviously, and Yale, again: obviously, but I came home for a week last summer, and my mom  _ refused _ to turn the A-C on, like always, and I couldn’t deal at all. And my mom wants us to visit family in India, which is like an entirely different  _ level _ of hot.”

“I can’t believe we used to think seventy was cold.”

Devi laughs. “God, you were in New Haven for undergrad – how did you even deal with those winters? New Jersey’s a little better.”

“Is New Haven worse in the winter than Princeton?” he asks. He thought they had similar weather, but then the furthest south he’s ever lived on the East Coast is New York.

“I mean, I guess not  _ really, _ realistically. It’s not like, you know, Cornell, or whatever. It’s still close enough to coastal.”

Ben rolls his eyes. “Like either of us would have ever gone to Cornell.”

“Oh, obviously not,” Devi agrees. “Which is a good thing because I think the winter would have killed us. You know, if we didn’t kill ourselves for only getting into Cornell first.”

“I think we’re far enough removed from high school that I feel comfortable enough saying that neither of us would have  _ only _ gotten into Cornell.” 

“Ben Gross, are you calling me smart?”

He’s always known Devi was smart, of course; you don’t become academic rivals with someone who isn’t as smart as you are. But he also feels like fucking with her. Just a little bit, for old time’s sake. “I mean,  _ Zoe  _ got into Cornell.” 

“So I’m smarter than Zoe?”

Ben knows he’s treading dangerous ground here, so he tries to backtrack. “You cared more about school than Zoe.”

She swats at him. “Fuck off. I’m  _ way _ smarter than Zoe. I’d like to see Zoe pass the Bar on her first try.”

“That’d be a lot more impressive if I hadn’t  _ also _ passed the Bar on my first try.”

“Asshole,” she says.

She’s right.

* * *

As much as Ben told himself it was a one-time thing, they end up hooking up a few more times. 

Dr. Vishwakumar finds out that he’s in town (does Devi  _ talk _ about him?) and invites him around for dinner.

It’s the first time he’s had dinner with someone who isn’t his roommates in over a year.

Dr. Vishwakumar fusses over him in a way that his own mother never has; the kind of way that if he thinks about it too much, it’ll make him want to cry. But that’s an issue for his therapist, and not something to unload on Devi’s mom.

Devi looks smug as she watches the whole thing. Of course she does. 

“I can’t believe that my only child passed the Bar exam and decided to stay in New York instead of coming home to her family.”

Devi rolls her eyes. “If L.A. lawyers want to pay me what New York lawyers will, I could change my mind.”

“You’re in New York?” Ben asks.

He’s still Facebook friends with Devi. Still follows her on Instagram and Twitter. Probably pays too much attention to her, if he’s honest, for how little they’ve spoken.

He didn’t know she was in New York.

“Yep. I have an apartment with some friends in the Bowery.”

“I’m in Tribeca.”

Devi rolls her eyes. “Of  _ course _ you live in Tribeca. Let me guess – alone?”

Ben feels himself blush. “No. I have roommates.” His parents had offered to pay for his own apartment, but after years of college and law school, Ben had learned that he preferred to be around other people.

Especially if those people wanted to be around him.

Something in Devi’s expression softens. “Oh. That makes sense. But still. Tribeca.”

“It was an effort to talk my parents into Tribeca. They wanted me to get an apartment in the Upper East Side. I mean – they don’t pay my rent, but they paid my security deposit.” That shouldn’t feel as embarrassing as it does. He knows Dr. Vishwakumar would help Devi out if she needed it, but he’s also sure that Devi pays her own rent and wouldn’t have moved to New York if she didn’t have the money herself.

“Surprised they didn’t just buy you a fancy Upper East Side apartment as a graduation present.”

He doesn’t tell her they offered. He just shrugs and changes the subject.

* * *

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you live in New York,” he says the next day. Devi is over his parents’ house again, having procured a bikini from  _ somewhere _ to go swimming.

Ben very pointedly does not stare. 

He’s never been one for flirty touching, or innuendos, or – well, most things when it comes to romance. Shira only liked him for his parents’ money. He dated in college, but it wasn’t the same.

He’s not  _ good _ at this stuff.

“I mean, you didn’t tell me  _ you _ were in New York, either,” Devi says.

She has a point.

“What does it even matter, Ben?”

It matters because, for the first time in seven years, he lives close enough to the only person who’s ever really  _ known _ him to do something about it. 

That this impulsive hooking up might lead to something.

He doesn’t say that.

“It’s just weird,” he says.

Devi rolls her eyes. “Yeah, weird that two young lawyers from the Valley would both move to the biggest city in the country after graduation.”

“I got offers in Boston, too.”

“I had one or two in Connecticut,” Devi says.

“And it’s not like I live in the Upper East Side and you live in Brooklyn. We’re, like, walking distance from each other.”

Devi shrugs. “New York isn’t  _ that _ big.”

That’s not the point. He knows she knows that.

If he had a better presence of mind, he’d know better than to push, but all he can think about is how this isn’t a coincidence that they’re here at the same time.

Or if it is, it’s a fucking amazing one.

“There’s a really good bar near my apartment. You should check it out when we get back.”

Devi raises one eyebrow. “Are you asking me out?”

Oh, god, does she have a boyfriend? “I’m just saying there’s a good bar by my apartment in New York.”

Devi slips into the water and swims away.

* * *

“Okay,” Devi says the next day. It’s Erev Yom Kippur, and he’s been eating complex carbs all day, and chugging gatorade for three. He doesn’t normally fast, can’t remember ever intentionally fasting before, but this year, he figured what the hell.

“What?” he asks. “I told you, I can’t have sex on Yom Kippur. It’s a religious thing.”

“First of all, you’ve never cared about that before.”

“We’ve  _ never _ had sex on Yom Kippur, Devi.”

“Whatever,” Devi says. “Anyway. What I meant was if you want to ask me out, you can ask me out.”

What? It’s definitely not fasting that’s making this make no sense, because the fast doesn’t start until sundown. “What?”

“That’s pretty obviously what you were hedging around yesterday, and you freaked out when I asked, so I’m telling you straight up: if you want to ask me out, you can ask me out.”

“What makes you think I want to ask you out, David?”

“Well, the fact that you just called me ‘David’, for one. For another, like, dude, you came over my mom’s house for dinner. And, like, who else have you even  _ seen _ when you’ve been home?”

Devi knows as well as he does that he doesn’t really have any friends in L.A. That’s part of why the East Coast was so enticing. Devi was the only difficult goodbye.

“Exactly,” Devi says when he doesn’t reply. “If you think I won’t like New York Ben, I mean, I didn’t like Valley Ben until we were in tenth grade, so I’m sure I’ll adjust.”

“‘New York Ben’?” he repeats.

“Everyone’s a little different when they leave their hometown.”

He wonders then what New York Devi is like.

“Oh, I’m pretty much the same,” she says, like she can read his mind – and maybe she can, a little. “I mean, I guess  _ how _ I talk changes a little bit. I try to sound a little more East Coast. And I dress a little different, but I don’t think I’m  _ that _ different. But you – you probably reinvented yourself when you started college.”

“I didn’t reinvent myself,” he says, but she’s right. She’s always right. She gives him a look that tells him he’s full of shit. “Okay,” he admits. “Like pretty much everyone else who went to an Ivy, I had to deal with most of my classmates actually being as smart as I was – but I think you were pretty good practise for that.”

Devi laughs. “We kept each other on our toes.”

“And unlike half of the guys on my floor I wasn’t upset when one of the girls in class was smarter than me.”

“And you say you’re not a feminist.”

“You know as well as I do that only shitty guys actually  _ call _ themselves feminists.”

Devi rolls her eyes and kisses him. “Fine. Since you’re  _ obviously _ not going to do it – Ben, do you want to go out with me when we get back to New York?”

Ben pretends to be offended, but he knows Devi sees right through him. She always has.

**Author's Note:**

> visit me on [tumblr](http://xslytherclawx.tumblr.com)!


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